Grey considered the situation: Thomas was found, the urgency was gone,
‘Okay, you have this afternoon; but our men will be outside, we’ll see you at seven. And Mr Aubrey, do one thing for me now.’
‘Of course, if I can.’
‘I saw the way the men let your car pass. They still recognise you, and trust you. Go down there now and speak to them; tell them you are doing all you can, but that there is no work here today; that the protest is a proud one but that it can have no result. They look up to you, most of them are still your employees. Let them get back to their families, have them leave you to your work.’
The man nodded his thanks, saying as Grey left, ‘And please don’t leave thinking there is anything sordid here, Inspector. I love Isobel in a way you cannot ask me to explain and which you will never understand.’
But Grey had had enough of them for now, a wave of tiredness hitting; as he turned toward the main office to find Cornelia waiting.
‘How did you..?’ he asked. ‘The protestors..?’
She smiled, ‘There is a back door you know. Anyway, it’s breaking up a little now.’
‘I’m afraid your car got a bit…’
‘Yes, I saw,’ she said in mock-horror. ‘I trust you’ll be filling out the claim form?’
After giving instructions to the officers downstairs at the gate, she led him from the office building to the yards at the rear of the factory, filling him in as they walked,
‘I showed the hotel reception film around the station, and some of the older officers confirmed that Mr Smith is Anthony Aubrey. Meanwhile, I spoke to Josie again, who doesn’t live in town and so hadn’t even heard of Isobel Semple. But I emailed her a photo from the file, and she confirms that she was the woman who met Mr Smith in his room.’
‘That’s good,’ said Grey, glad of the corroboration. ‘I haven’t got a word on tape from either of them yet.’
‘So what next, boss?’ asked Cori as they found the squad car she had commandeered. Through the chicken- wire fence, Grey watched the lorries now free to come and go from the neighbouring yard,
‘You know these fellows can live in their cabs for days, sleep in them even. They have TVs, fridges, drinks machines.’
‘What are you thinking, boss?’
‘That there could have been people at the services all night who might have heard or saw something.’
‘But none have come forward, even after your appeal mentioned Thomas had last been seen there.’
‘But they would be in a different town now, and might not know that what they heard or saw could be something important.’
‘But how would we..?’ she let her question hang.
‘Well it’s something to think about; but not right now. Drop me home will you? I want to be fresh for this evening. And call me at seven if I’m not up.’
Cori wondered if the few hours sleep this would permit could get him back to full speed for an evening of interviewing? He certainly needed a brush up, and his clothes were wrecked.
‘Actually, hold on here a minute,’ he said then. ‘I’ve just remembered something else.’
With renewed energy, he jogged back over to the building and up the stairs,
‘Mrs Marsh,’ he called as he walked through the office, ‘may I speak with you a moment?’
‘Of course, what is it, Inspector?’
He ushered her into one of the empty rooms, ‘It was something you said earlier…’
‘Oh yes?’ she said, with put on innocence.
‘I wonder, what was the rumour about Christine Semple..?’
Chapter 35 — Aubrey in Interview
‘Thomas Long was just about the last person I hired before stepping down as head of the company. He was fresh out of the sixth-form, and his dad had had a word of course. I always gave factory families a chance.’
Grey thought Anthony Aubrey looked awful, sat across from him in the interview room a little after the appointed hour. An afternoon of salvaging what he could from his life’s work had obviously taken its toll; but there was no putting this conversation off. The man continued,
‘I got to know him well those last few months, not that he ever gave very much away. We worked closely during the changeover, and by the time Alex was properly in charge Tom was running half of the office.
‘He was a very quick learner, Inspector: you would show him a task on Monday, and by Friday he was the authority on it. Only he had this awful initial uncertainty, an embarrassment at his own clumsiness when he had yet to master something new; but after that he could be trusted with it implicitly. He was a boss’ dream, he made delegation so easy, he took on work like a sponge. I wonder now if he didn’t have such a deep insecurity that with every new task he took on he felt himself a little less dispensable? Perhaps I gave him too much work? Who knows.
‘And he was so shy with it you wouldn’t believe! After a while I gave up trying to encourage him in the social side of things. His father was a quiet one too, unshowy, loving his home life. But at least he had Lily, and a bit of a life outside the factory — you could always twist his arm to come for one pint on the Friday before a Bank Holiday weekend. I don’t think I ever saw Thomas touch a drop.’
‘And what about after you’d retired?’
‘Work kept us in touch for a while: they still needed the odd signature from me, and Thomas would bring me up to speed with what was going on at the old place. I even bought him lunch at the Club a couple of times, but it was wasted on him really, he was no gourmet, and he was never sure how to behave in restaurants. I think he would rather have had a plate of his mother’s cooking any day of the week. But I enjoyed our meetings, and as I say, it reassured me to know he was on top of things.’
‘But you hadn’t been there a while?’
‘No. As I became less involved our meetings tailed off. Friendships do, don’t you notice, Inspector? Not through anyone’s doing. It is just the nature if these things.
‘Until this week…’
‘Until this week… when Thomas called me out of the blue.’
‘This was on Monday evening?’
Aubrey shook his head, but only in disbelief, ‘I knew straight away that something was wrong. He asked to speak to me as soon as possible, than night even. He sounded scared, I didn’t like it, so I said to hold on, that I’d drive into town and meet him at the Club. Once I got there, no sooner were we sat down that he came out with it: that the payroll wasn’t going through this month, that he couldn’t make it work. And it got worse… he told me that the bank manager had already called him, had laid it out to him straight that the money wasn’t there.
‘Once he started there was no stopping him, and Tom told me everything, shaking and almost in tears: How Alex had been away all afternoon, had hardly been in the office at all recently, leaving him with no one there to turn to; how staff had been leaving and not being replaced, the office becoming like a ghost town full of empty rooms. And he told me how Alex had been out more and more lately chasing new contracts, talking down the staff’s concerns and putting his faith in his business contacts, saying how this meeting or that deal that would make it all alright, and to leave it to him and not to worry.
‘Tom even told me how a couple of the lads had already been asking him for their payslips early; and how they’d caught him off guard and he told them, told them everything! He said how he’d needed to tell someone — that he’d had nowhere to go with the pressure.’
‘What did you say?’
‘I said not to worry, that their gossip would be forgotten once everyone was paid.’
‘You knew better though?’
‘I think Thomas knew it too.’
‘That you were days from disaster?’
‘I reckon he had been scared of something like this happening for months. It was a Hellish situation for him,
